Amit Shah To Discuss With Oppositions Before Choosing Presidential Candidate

On Saturday, the BJP President Amit Shah said that his party would consult opposition parties before deciding on ruling party’s senior-most constitutional post. Many of the opposition parties are coming together to have a unity over the choice of Presidential candidate. Shah said that the saffron party would seek to build a consensus with the opposition. While talking to PTI during an interaction, Amit Shah said, “Consensus is a word that is used in several ways. But we will hold discussions with everyone, including opposition parties.”

The opposition parties like Congress, Mamta Banerjee-led TMC, and the Left have suggested the BJP that they should field a secular candidate for the President and it must not be a candidate with Hindutva leanings. But the fact is that the ruling party is not going to be perturbed with the stand of opposition parties as it has enough numbers in the presidential electoral favoring it. When asked about the list of names BJP prefers for the Presidential candidate, Shah declined to give any name and claimed that the party hasn’t decided on it yet. “We have not decided on any name yet. We will first talk to our NDA allies. Then we will talk to opposition parties,” said Shah. The electoral college for the presidential polls has a total of 11,04,546 votes, while the BJP-led NDA’s count stands currently at 5.38 lakh.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is hopeful that they will get the support from both the groups of AIADMK, who are also in power in Tamil Nadu. The election for the post of President is most likely to happen in July whereas the election for the post of vice-president is scheduled for August. The majority for picking the vice-president is clearly in the hands of BJP-led NDA as they have the support of 418 members out of 787 (including allies), the total strength of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha. When asked about providing jobs for the youth, Shah said, “We have tried to give a new perspective to employment as it is not possible to provide employment to everyone in a country of 125 crore people. We are promoting self-employment and the government has made eight crore people self-employed.”